TSC discloses the criteria it recently applied to promote Chief and Senior Principals.
Following a significant uproar from those who were left out, the Teachers Service Commission (TSC) has now come clean and provided the secondary school principals with an explanation of the selection and promotion criteria they used to choose and promote some of them to the lucrative posts of Chief and Senior Principals. 36,504 teachers, including Chief and Senior Principals, were promoted to higher grades in March of this year.
During the 47th Kenya Secondary School Heads Association (KESSHA) in Mombasa on June 27, 2024, the Commission disclosed to school administrators during a plenary session that 3,920 principals had submitted applications for promotion out of the 142 Chief and Senior Principal positions that had been posted.
A staggering 3,498 Principals applied to be promoted to the position of Senior Principal at Grade D4 in order to fill 108 positions, while 422 Principals applied to be promoted to the position of Chief Principal at Grade D5, where the Commission had only advertised 34 positions, according to TSC acting Director of Staff Antonina Lentoijoni.
She said that all applicants were invited to the Commission’s interviews, which were conducted using a strict scoring methodology that prioritizes a number of variables and selection criteria, such as gender, affirmative action, and regional balance.
When assigning points, the Commission took into account the acting principals who were in Grades D2 and D3. Some of the TSC Directors in Mombasa during the 47th annual conference, representing different regions.
Additionally, stagnation was taken into account, meaning that the longer a teacher acted, the higher the scores—a measure of time the principal had taken in the grade.
The KCSE scores were also a major factor in the scoring process, as the Commission considered whether mean score—the school mean score or the principal’s subject mean score—could benefit the teacher.
Lentoijoni said that the panel switched its attention to the teacher’s improvement index, where they examined the performance trend over the previous three years, in cases when the mean score was insufficient to support the principal.
Performance in extracurricular activities and age group—those who had stayed with a few years left before retirement had a greater advantage—were other criteria.
Lentoijoni claims that since the posts were to be distributed across the nation as needed, about 98% of the Principals who had applied for the positions may have been excluded as a result of the selection process.
The Commission chose to award counties that had never gotten a Chief Principal job in addition to taking affirmative action and gender into consideration, as there were insufficient Chief Principal positions to be distributed among the 47 counties.
Additionally, senior principal jobs were distributed among all counties, with some receiving between two and three roles.
TSC discloses the criteria it recently applied to promote Chief and Senior Principals.
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